Meh, those Democrats were almost like shadow Congressmen in any case. The wave of conservative leaning Democrats that came into office with Obama backed by his popularity and the GOPs falling fortunes that election year were unique creatures that were a product of the conservative constituencies from which they came.
They themselves were not die hard liberals, they were conservative Democrats, so for starters they did not want to pass certain things because despite being in the same party they weren’t mainstream liberals. Secondly they wanted a chance at being reelected. Many conservative Democrats when up for reelection will argue that they are “independent of the national party” because they know their conservative constituency would not vote for “national” Democrats. They could not further associate themselves with the national party by supporting bills that would make them seem to be highly linked with national party politics.
It definitely doesn’t look like shrewd negotiating. It looks like Obama is letting other people decide what gets done. If Obama is in control and is setting the agenda, he needs to get that message out there.
Yet one more in an never-ending parade of examples of how people just don’t pay attention.
He never, in any fashion, came across as a progressive, either deliberately or inadvertantly. His history makes it clear that he’s not and anyone who expected it has only their own obtuseness to blame.
I never believed he was a progressive, I knew what he was, I loved him then, I love him now.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
No, you can’t. The Left has gotten almost nothing that it has wanted, and what little they did get was against Obama’s obvious will. The Right has relentlessly gotten favors ladled out to it by Republican and Democrat alike.
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Yeah, but unfortunately you really can’t see it. You know, intellectually that the right says much the same. They constantly complain about the ‘fact’ of the ‘liberal media’, or the ‘fact’ that the left wing has been or is taking over, and that even when they controlled everything they didn’t get their way. Iraq? That’s a joke. It’s not right wingers who wanted Iraq…most of the real right wingers are isolationists who don’t want anything to do with dirty ferriners. Just like there are various factions on the left, the right wing is made up of different, mostly contentious factions who have different aims and goals. Fiscal conservative, social conservatives, religious conservatives, neo-conservatives and paleo-conservatives…the list goes on and on.
The irony is, ask a right winger the same question I asked you, and he’s going to say something very similar to what you said, except that it will be a laundry list of horrible left wing things that Obama (or Clinton) accomplished, while giving a similar laundry list of failures by the Republicans to push through a real right wing agenda. But you really, truly can’t see it…just like they can’t see it. I have this same conversation constantly with my dad…just reverse the roles, and put me in as the flaming liberal (which is what my dad things of my political views).
Ah. And I guess No True Scotsman would invade Iraq either. Naturally the right wingers aren’t getting what they want if you define “right wing” as “people who aren’t getting what they want”.
:rolleyes: No, it’s just that I don’t buy into that standard false equivalency between Left and Right, the one that always gets put out to handwave away any and all claims and desires of the Left and to defend the psychopathic behavior of the Right. Somehow the Left is always just as bad, just as irrational, just as angry, just as corrupt, just as violent, just as delusional, just as bigoted, getting just as much or as little as the Right is. Whether or not there’s any evidence that is so, it must be true. Since the Right has little or nothing good about it, people can’t actually argue in favor of it without looking ridiculous; so they try to smear the Left instead and pretend that there is no difference.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Ah. And I guess No True Scotsman would invade Iraq either. Naturally the right wingers aren’t getting what they want if you define “right wing” as “people who aren’t getting what they want”.
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Ah…but you are the one who see’s everything as monolithic and monochromatic. So, to you it has to be an either/or proposition…either every right winger is in lock step for Iraq, or they aren’t, and since some of them were they all must have been. You always fail to see that there is a middle position, where some of them were for it, and some of them weren’t…which means playing the No True Scotsman card only works if we all view the world as black or white.
Well, it’s not like you are biased or anything, right? I mean, you are a guy who thinks…believes really…that the Democrats and the Republicans are essentially equivalent. They are, to you, exactly the same. And in your world things are either black or white…black hats or white hats. The left, to you, are always the white hats…the right (which by your definition is everything that isn’t to your definition of left) is always black hats. It’s as simple as that…to you.
Me…I’m more of a shades of gray kind of person. I see good things in the left…and bad things. And I see good things and bad things on the right. Mostly, I see a more moderate, centrist stance as being generally the best for the majority of people, where leaning a bit left on some things and a bit right on others, but avoiding extremes is the best course. At the extremes of either spectrum I see wingnuttery, which IMHO needs to be avoided like the plague, and fought whenever and however it rears it’s ugly head.
So, getting back to the OP, I can see why Obama is unpopular with the wingnuts on both sides, since neither the left nor right wingers are EVER going to get their dream candidate elected…and if hell froze over and the magic ponies ever DID fly, their dream candidate would STILL have to work and play in the real world, which means that he’d disappoint his base, and they would turn on him as you and your kind are turning on Obama…like the rabid weasels you are.
Wrong. The Left (by American standards of what is “Left”) is white, gray and black; the Left comprises most of the human race, most of all possible human behaviors. The (American) Right is a very narrow, very extreme, very irrational, very nasty fanatic fringe on the far edge of human behavior. There’s no room on the Right to be anything other than nasty and crazy.
I typically don’t bring up the “black hats” on the Left because they are too minuscule and powerless to matter here. And because other people can be relied on to bring them up and pretend that they are the Left.
I kind of agree with this, and I’m a leftie. I just don’t get the sense of betrayal, like, at all. Maybe for a lot of young people, this is just the first time they’ve had it shoved in their face that election season rhetoric is not what you should be looking at when judging your prospective president, but I don’t get it from older people. And even at that, on the whole, Obama has done or attempted to do the bulk of what he promised. Where he’s fallen short, it was often his own party who sold him out (as well as the fuckwad Republicans, but that’s a given).
I do think he makes consistent tactical mistakes as regards compromising too early (or doesn’t hold the values he says he has strongly enough to VALUE them, take your pick), but that’s more a failing of process for me than of ideology. I can’t STAND how he negotiates. I hate the brain dead bipartisanship he was all about for his first two years and even now continues to throw sops to. It’s fucking stupid. But I don’t feel betrayed, never have, and sort of want to smack the people who do. It’s just so pointless, and gets us nowhere.
I think you mean Chappaqua. Unless there’s a new hostess at the Lakewood Applebee’s.
[QUOTE=Normal Phase]
I do think he makes consistent tactical mistakes as regards compromising too early (or doesn’t hold the values he says he has strongly enough to VALUE them, take your pick), but that’s more a failing of process for me than of ideology. I can’t STAND how he negotiates. I hate the brain dead bipartisanship he was all about for his first two years and even now continues to throw sops to. It’s fucking stupid. But I don’t feel betrayed, never have, and sort of want to smack the people who do. It’s just so pointless, and gets us nowhere.
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This is how I feel. I was enormously frustrated at the way he let the Republicans frame the health care debate, by giving them what they’ve said wanted since 1996, and expecting them to take it. Instead, he let the debate fall between the Republican plan and the extreme right-wing plan (or lack thereof). But that wasn’t a betrayal; it was just an ill-advised tactic.
This is Obama’s superpower, I think. He’ll continue to get things done, he’ll continue to move Congress in the general direction of his policies, and he’ll continue to do this without drama or fanfare. Including the 2008 campaign, most people have had over three years to watch the man work, and he’s still got many enemies and allies alike convinced they’re politically smarter or more strategically capable than he is.
Barack Obama isn’t a stealth Republican, and he’s not an 11th dimensional chess player. He’s not a centrist (you’re thinking of the Clintons). He may be a moderate, but that’s a consequence of pragmatism. He’s definitely not a Marxist.
He’s Tom Sawyer, and he keeps getting ConservaDems and GOPers to whitewash his fences. If he could do it all himself, I’m betting he’d do a better job of it, but he can’t. So what we get is whatever job he can get done from shitty workers.
I’m going to disagree. Obama has a pretty damn progressive background, most notably the community organizing he did in Chicago. During that time he became involved in a church that is notorious for its emphasis on liberation theology, which is so liberal that many people think it’s racist.
Here is an interesting article, with a conservative slant, on what Obama did in Chicago. As a far-left liberal myself who is currently taking a course on political social work, I can assure you that his background is quite radical. This is the stuff many social workers live and breathe. Even the reason he cited for going to law school - ‘‘to understand the dynamics of power’’ - indicates a strongly liberal framework.
Now maybe that changed with his legislative career. Maybe law school made a diplomat out of him. Or maybe he’s just not very good at putting his ideals into practice. Either way, I don’t think it’s fair to say there was never any evidence of true liberalism.
I mean, you are a guy who thinks…believes really…that the Democrats and the Republicans are essentially equivalent. They are, to you, exactly the same. And in your world things are either black or white…black hats or white hats. The left, to you, are always the white hats…the right (which by your definition is everything that isn’t to your definition of left) is always black hats. It’s as simple as that…to you.